dragonofenvy
Mage
- Oct 8, 2023
- 516
Bit of a doomer post here, but frankly, I'm sick and tired of being told that despite being autistic I'm destined to be this great awesome successful person. When I failed that, I was told that it's because I didn't try hard enough. Kind of triggering to hear that I didn't try hard from someone who was born into a rich family was who now makes $200,000 per year because they were able to go to a nice college to make that kind of money and I had to go through 20xs more crap for just a fraction of the success. I know there are a lot of autistic people on this forum who probably feel similarly. I don't know the exact numbers of those with ASD on this forum but I'm assuming it's a high proportion.
Disclaimer if you couldn't figure it out already - I'm making this post out of a place of bitterness and envy (hence my name). Mainly from the fact that people don't know what we have to go through out how horrible our quality of life is, generally. I'm also irritated at how our issues are largely ignored. Sure, we're about 1% of the world population, but there are other groups of a similar population proportion that have gotten national and worldwide attention while we've been sidelined for years which I personally find frustrating that we're still being ignored. I'm not writing this as a way for attention to be brought to it, because let's face it, people have tried and it hasn't worked out. I'm mostly writing this as a way to say "Look at the shit we have to deal with, don't tell me that I need to try harder." This is the only place I'm allowed to do that without the generic "this is so sad I hope society changes" when we know damn well it won't. I know the people who should see this won't, but at least I'll feel better knowing that a couple of people did. I'm just tired of having all the crap I went through being an untold story.
If this doesn't belong here, feel free to let me know.
Feel free to offer criticisms for this as I'm just some rando and am not the best and research as I've been out of it for a few years. Plus, I have an obvious bias here considering I'm digging for negative statistics. Read at your own peril as this is going to be a very negative post. Also, it's very long.
Disclaimer if you couldn't figure it out already - I'm making this post out of a place of bitterness and envy (hence my name). Mainly from the fact that people don't know what we have to go through out how horrible our quality of life is, generally. I'm also irritated at how our issues are largely ignored. Sure, we're about 1% of the world population, but there are other groups of a similar population proportion that have gotten national and worldwide attention while we've been sidelined for years which I personally find frustrating that we're still being ignored. I'm not writing this as a way for attention to be brought to it, because let's face it, people have tried and it hasn't worked out. I'm mostly writing this as a way to say "Look at the shit we have to deal with, don't tell me that I need to try harder." This is the only place I'm allowed to do that without the generic "this is so sad I hope society changes" when we know damn well it won't. I know the people who should see this won't, but at least I'll feel better knowing that a couple of people did. I'm just tired of having all the crap I went through being an untold story.
If this doesn't belong here, feel free to let me know.
Feel free to offer criticisms for this as I'm just some rando and am not the best and research as I've been out of it for a few years. Plus, I have an obvious bias here considering I'm digging for negative statistics. Read at your own peril as this is going to be a very negative post. Also, it's very long.
Life Expectancy & Suicide:
Surprisingly it's been very difficult to find consistent research on this. I've seen some research indicating that some people with autism have a life expectancy of 39 years (first paragraph in abstract). Other sources say it's at around the 50s. Some say it's in the early 70s. I'd like to think it's somewhere in the middle, so I'll go with the 50s. This doesn't mean you're going to die of old age at 50, since life expectancy statistics are often skewed by childhood deaths. On that topic, one of the leading causes of death is accidental injuries such as drowning, especially among children. If it's not that, then, generally from the research I've found, the next leading cause of death is suicide. Yes, that's right, it's the second leading cause of death. Not only that but despite being such a small fraction of the population, they make up 11% of those suicides, particularly among women. You'll see why it's so high in the next part. Here's another source that says the same thing though this one's study is missing, but I've seen it cited by other outlets a lot.
Victimization:
This is perhaps the worst part that I found. And here I thought I was the exception, but no, it's apparently the norm. This source cites several studies that suggest autistic people have about an 89% victimization rate, with 92% being poly-victims, meaning, they're victimized more than once. Examples would include: assault, abuse (physical, sexual, emotional), neglect, etc. Even worse, about 40-50% of autistic adults reported being sexually abused, with almost 9/10 autistic women having been sexually abused. That statistic is so high that I really want to believe that it's untrue, but having experienced it myself and knowing just how cruel people are I'm unfortunately not too shocked. This is just among their childhood btw, this isn't even accounting adulthood. For male victims like myself, I, unfortunately, wasn't able to find anything substantial, nothing unusual since male victims still aren't given much light. I know I wasn't given any. Their 40-50% range is probably a decent estimate considering there's nothing else to go on.
I just want to say that between the 89% victimization rate, and the the rates among women, just. I don't even think I can say anything. How can you have this many people being tortured by others and nobody knows about it? How can you possibly have such a shocking statistic and nothing is done? I fucking hate the world. Starting to see why the life expectancy is so low, and suicide rates so high? And yet...
Bullying, Friendships, Psychological Problems:
This presentation from the UK government says that 70% of autistic children have a psychological problem, with 40% having 2 or more. Bear in mind this is something diagnosable like depression, and that's only if you get it diagnosed. You can still have undiagnosed psychological problems. Unsurprisingly too, lots of autistic people are bullied, over 60%, though I hate to cite autism speaks as a source considering they don't cite their evidence, but I wanted to try to provide readable sources instead of those nerdy academic journals I've been putting in. Even if they're not a good source, most evidence says you're going to be bullied for being born different. That's how people are. They might claim that they're oh so accepting of people who are different, but they're really not. As far as friendships go, "A study of parent reports of friendships indicated 34% of autistic children had at least one good friend, compared to 71% of children with other disabilities and 93% of neurotypical children without disabilities". Have fun being a loner! Part of me wonders if the male loneliness epidemic we've been hearing about is related to autistic traits, considering men are much more likely to be autistic. Can't really say for sure.
Employment:
This is the last one, and I'm done with statistics. It's a quick one. 85% of autistic people are unemployed. Probably has something to do with all the things I have just talked about. I mean, I know I don't want to get a job right now due to my psychological problems. Plus the inability to communicate like normal people, and just generally being off makes you less employable.
My Closing Thoughts:
Remember, you can be just like Elon Musk! Your autism makes you better than everyone else, and your struggles will reward you greatly! If only that were the case. As I said before, I wrote this to show all the people who told me I didn't try hard enough that they were wrong. I, objectively, had to deal with so much more shit for so much less reward. These stats are going into my note once I decide it's time. Maybe that'll finally give it some attention. I mean, a lot of the sources I put down offer so many solutions, but guess what? It's still a huge fucking problem, isn't it? We still have to deal with crushing loneliness. We still have to deal with being victims of people who are more than willing to prey on weakness. We are expected to be successful despite the torment we face, and evidence showing the contrary. I know, that it isn't entirely the fault of the outside world, and that the individual does have some amount of responsibility but I know damn well those people who told me it was 100% my fault are wrong. I'm tired of the idea that we are 100% at fault for our own circumstances. They can fuck off. I'd love to see them live with just half of the experience. I could've listed 5 more points here since there's so much shit to deal with but I figured these were the big ones.
So, if anyone tells you you can be great despite your disability, remind them of how much more you put in, and how much less you get out of it. Maybe then they'll change their tune. I know that there are a lot of people with ASD who haven't had these experiences and are pretty content with their lives, but these are the only examples that are used. They use positive examples of success to hide how much people suffer. I get it, you want people to have hope. But when this many people are suffering you can't just hide it with positivity. In fact, this doesn't even apply to ASD. It applies to everyone. So many people blame you as a person for your suffering. They don't seem to realize just how much luck plays into it.
Will anything be done about these crises? I doubt it. This has been a problem for decades now. To this day very little is done. The only thing to do is just keep coping. Which really sucks. I wish I didn't have to live a life of coping simply because I was born differently. ASD is the reason I'm ctbing. I never realized just how much it affected me. I used to genuinely believe the people who blamed me. I know better now. If you were blamed by everyone, regardless if you have ASD or not, know that it objectively, is not 100% your fault. The people saying it are asses that have their heads in the clouds.
If you read this far. Thanks. I hope you got something out of it.
Surprisingly it's been very difficult to find consistent research on this. I've seen some research indicating that some people with autism have a life expectancy of 39 years (first paragraph in abstract). Other sources say it's at around the 50s. Some say it's in the early 70s. I'd like to think it's somewhere in the middle, so I'll go with the 50s. This doesn't mean you're going to die of old age at 50, since life expectancy statistics are often skewed by childhood deaths. On that topic, one of the leading causes of death is accidental injuries such as drowning, especially among children. If it's not that, then, generally from the research I've found, the next leading cause of death is suicide. Yes, that's right, it's the second leading cause of death. Not only that but despite being such a small fraction of the population, they make up 11% of those suicides, particularly among women. You'll see why it's so high in the next part. Here's another source that says the same thing though this one's study is missing, but I've seen it cited by other outlets a lot.
Victimization:
This is perhaps the worst part that I found. And here I thought I was the exception, but no, it's apparently the norm. This source cites several studies that suggest autistic people have about an 89% victimization rate, with 92% being poly-victims, meaning, they're victimized more than once. Examples would include: assault, abuse (physical, sexual, emotional), neglect, etc. Even worse, about 40-50% of autistic adults reported being sexually abused, with almost 9/10 autistic women having been sexually abused. That statistic is so high that I really want to believe that it's untrue, but having experienced it myself and knowing just how cruel people are I'm unfortunately not too shocked. This is just among their childhood btw, this isn't even accounting adulthood. For male victims like myself, I, unfortunately, wasn't able to find anything substantial, nothing unusual since male victims still aren't given much light. I know I wasn't given any. Their 40-50% range is probably a decent estimate considering there's nothing else to go on.
I just want to say that between the 89% victimization rate, and the the rates among women, just. I don't even think I can say anything. How can you have this many people being tortured by others and nobody knows about it? How can you possibly have such a shocking statistic and nothing is done? I fucking hate the world. Starting to see why the life expectancy is so low, and suicide rates so high? And yet...
Bullying, Friendships, Psychological Problems:
This presentation from the UK government says that 70% of autistic children have a psychological problem, with 40% having 2 or more. Bear in mind this is something diagnosable like depression, and that's only if you get it diagnosed. You can still have undiagnosed psychological problems. Unsurprisingly too, lots of autistic people are bullied, over 60%, though I hate to cite autism speaks as a source considering they don't cite their evidence, but I wanted to try to provide readable sources instead of those nerdy academic journals I've been putting in. Even if they're not a good source, most evidence says you're going to be bullied for being born different. That's how people are. They might claim that they're oh so accepting of people who are different, but they're really not. As far as friendships go, "A study of parent reports of friendships indicated 34% of autistic children had at least one good friend, compared to 71% of children with other disabilities and 93% of neurotypical children without disabilities". Have fun being a loner! Part of me wonders if the male loneliness epidemic we've been hearing about is related to autistic traits, considering men are much more likely to be autistic. Can't really say for sure.
Employment:
This is the last one, and I'm done with statistics. It's a quick one. 85% of autistic people are unemployed. Probably has something to do with all the things I have just talked about. I mean, I know I don't want to get a job right now due to my psychological problems. Plus the inability to communicate like normal people, and just generally being off makes you less employable.
My Closing Thoughts:
Remember, you can be just like Elon Musk! Your autism makes you better than everyone else, and your struggles will reward you greatly! If only that were the case. As I said before, I wrote this to show all the people who told me I didn't try hard enough that they were wrong. I, objectively, had to deal with so much more shit for so much less reward. These stats are going into my note once I decide it's time. Maybe that'll finally give it some attention. I mean, a lot of the sources I put down offer so many solutions, but guess what? It's still a huge fucking problem, isn't it? We still have to deal with crushing loneliness. We still have to deal with being victims of people who are more than willing to prey on weakness. We are expected to be successful despite the torment we face, and evidence showing the contrary. I know, that it isn't entirely the fault of the outside world, and that the individual does have some amount of responsibility but I know damn well those people who told me it was 100% my fault are wrong. I'm tired of the idea that we are 100% at fault for our own circumstances. They can fuck off. I'd love to see them live with just half of the experience. I could've listed 5 more points here since there's so much shit to deal with but I figured these were the big ones.
So, if anyone tells you you can be great despite your disability, remind them of how much more you put in, and how much less you get out of it. Maybe then they'll change their tune. I know that there are a lot of people with ASD who haven't had these experiences and are pretty content with their lives, but these are the only examples that are used. They use positive examples of success to hide how much people suffer. I get it, you want people to have hope. But when this many people are suffering you can't just hide it with positivity. In fact, this doesn't even apply to ASD. It applies to everyone. So many people blame you as a person for your suffering. They don't seem to realize just how much luck plays into it.
Will anything be done about these crises? I doubt it. This has been a problem for decades now. To this day very little is done. The only thing to do is just keep coping. Which really sucks. I wish I didn't have to live a life of coping simply because I was born differently. ASD is the reason I'm ctbing. I never realized just how much it affected me. I used to genuinely believe the people who blamed me. I know better now. If you were blamed by everyone, regardless if you have ASD or not, know that it objectively, is not 100% your fault. The people saying it are asses that have their heads in the clouds.
If you read this far. Thanks. I hope you got something out of it.
